NY Times op-ed cliche artist Nicholas Kristof phones in one of his columns this morning. It is so full of triteness and crap that I almost decided not to comment. But I can’t help myself.
Cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.
Yes. That’s what Kristof says. Generations of poor kids go to bad schools because of teacher unions. For example, it must be teacher unions that have relegated Illinois to the 49th state in the union in levels of public school funding. The IEA and the IFT must have cowed the Democratic legislature in Illinois into refusing to adequately fund schools.
This is the central front in the war on poverty, the civil rights issue of our time. Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, isn’t it time to end our “separate but equal” school systems?
If I had a dollar for every time some hack writer says that something is the civil rights issue of our time, I wouldn’t have to worry about the political cronies who run my state teacher retirement system. And please, someone explain why Kristoff puts separate but equal in quotes? They are separate. They are not equal. And, trust me, teachers and their unions didn’t do it.
Fred Klonsky 